CIA DOC 1035 960

MARY

FERRELL

FOUNDATION

preserving the legacy

www. mary ferre 11. o rg

Title: COUNTERING CRITICISM OF THE WARREN REPORT
Author: n/a
Pages: 4
Agency: CIA

RIF#: 1993.06.25.11:27:14:370410
Subjects: CRITICISM WC REPORT
Source: AARC

LWUSEUTCW ffSTI/t

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1993.06.25.11:27:14:370410

Recseries

JFK

Agfileno

201-289248

JFK Box #

OSW17

Vol/Folder

V4B

Title

COUNTERING CRITICISM OF THE WARREN REPORT

Tirest

N

Document Date

4/1/1967 .

Whofrom

CHIEF, [[DELETION/]]

Fromrest

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Whoto

CHIEFS, CERTAIN STATIONS

Torest

N

Numpg

3

Originator

CIA

Daterev

06/25/93

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PAPER

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1

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Comment

Keywords

CRITICISM

WC REPORT

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_ Countering Criticism of the Warren Report

ACTION REQUIRED - REFERENCES ' " ~ 7

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1 • Our Concern . From the day of President Kennedy's assassination on,
there has "been speculation about the" responsibility for his murder. Although
this was stemmed for a time by the Warren Commission report (which appeared at
the end of September 1964), various writers have now had time to scan the
Commission's published report and documents for new pretexts for questioning,
and there has been a new wave of books and articles criticizing the Commission's
findings. In most cases the critics have speculated as to the existence of some
kind of conspiracy, and often they have implied that the Commission itself was
involved. Presumably as a result of the increasing challenge to the Warren
Commission's Report, a public opinion poll recently indicated that 46# of the
American public did not think that Oswald acted alone, while more than half of
those polled thought that the Commission had left some questions unresolved.
Doubtless polls abroad would show similar, or possibly more adverse, results.

2. This trend of opinion is a matter of concern to the U.S. government,
including our organization. The members of the Warren Commission were naturally
chosen for their integrity, experience, and prominence. They represented both
major parties, and they and their staff were deliberately drawn from all sections
of the country. Just because of the standing of the Commissioners, efforts to
impugn their rectitude and wisdom tend to cast doubt on the whole leadership of
American society...Moreover, there seems to be an increasing tendency to hint
that President Johnson himself, as the one person who might be said to have
benefited, was in some way responsible for the assassination. "Innuendo of
such seriousness affects not only the individual concerned, but also the whole
reputation of the American government. Our organization itself is directly
involved:, among other facts, we contributed information to the investigation.
Conspiracy theories have frequently thrown suspicion on our organization, for
example by falsely alleging that Lee Harvey Oswald worked for us. The aim of
this dispatch is to provide~mater-ial-for_cpuntering and discrediting the claims
of the conspiracy theorists, so as to inhibit the"circulation-of...such claims in
other countries. Background information is supplied in a classified section and
in a number of unclassified attachments.

3. Action . We do not recommend that discussion of the assassination ques¬
tion be initiated where it is not already taking place. Where discussion is
active, however, addressees are requested:

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CROSS REFERENCE TO

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9 attachments h/w

8 - Unclassified

BD 5847

Vl/67

'4 d.Ary

1967

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DESTROY WHEN NO LONGER
NEEDED

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a. To discuss the publicity problem with liaison and friendly elite contacts
(especially politicians and editors), pointing out that the Warren Commission
made as thorough an investigation as humanly possible, that the charges of the
critics are. vithout serious foundation, and that further speculative discussion
•only plays into the hands of the opposition. Point out also that parts of the
conspiracy talk appear to be deliberately generated by Communist propagandists.
Urge them to use their influence to discourage unfounded and irresponsible
speculation.

b. To employ propaganda assets to answer and refute the attacks of the
critics. Book reviews and feature articles are particularly appropriate for
this purpose. The unclassified attachments to this guidance should provide
useful background material for passage to assets. Our play should point out,
as applicable, that the critics are (i) weddejL to theories adopted before the'
evidence was in, (ii) politically interested, (iii) financially interested, (iv)
hasty and inaccurate in their research, or (v) infatuated with their own theories.
In the course of discussions of the whole phenomenon of criticism, a useful
strategy may be to single out Epstein's theory for attack, using the attached.

• Fletcher Knebel article and Spectator piece for background. (Although Mark
Lane's book is much less convincing than Epstein's and comes-off badly where
contested by knowledgeable critics, it is also much more difficult to answer
• as a whole, as one becomes lost in a morass of unrelated details.)

In private or media discussion not directed at any particular writer, or
in attacking publications which may be yet forthcoming, the following arguments
should be useful: „

a. No significant new evidence has emerged which the Commission did not
consider. The assassination is sometimes compared (e.g., by Joachim Joesten
and Bertrand Russell) with, the Dreyfus case; however, unlike that case, the .
attacks on the Warren Commission have produced no new evidence, no new culprits
have been convincingly identified, and there is no agreement among the critics.

(A better parallel, though an imperfect one, might be with the Reichstag fire

of 1933, which some competent historians (Fritz Tobias, A.J.P. Taylor, D.C. Watt)
now believe was set by Van der Lubbe on his own initiative, without acting for
either Nazis or Communists; the Nazis tried to pin the blame-on the Communists,
but the latter have been much more successful in convincing the world that the
Nazis were to blame.)

b. Critics usually overvalue particular items and ignore others. They tend
to place more emphasis on the recollections of individual eyewitnesses (which
are less reliable-and more divergent — and hence offer more hand-holds for
criticism) and less on ballistic, autopsy, and photographic evidence. A close
examination of the Commission's records will usually show that the conflicting
eyewitness accounts are quoted out of context, or were discarded by the Commis¬
sion for good and sufficient reason.

c. Conspiracy on the large scale often suggested would be impossible to con¬
ceal in the United States, esp. since informants could expect to receive large
royalties, etc. Note that Robert Kennedy, Attorney General at the time and
John F. Kennedy's brother, would be the last man to overlook or conceal any
conspiracy. And as one reviewer pointed out. Congressman Gerald R. Ford would
hardly.have held‘his tongue for the sake of the Democratic administration, and
Senator Russell would have had every political interest in exposing any misdeeds
on the part of Chief Justice Warren. A conspirator moreover would hardly choose
a- location for a shooting where so much depended on conditions beyond his con¬
trol:’ the route, the speed of the cars, the moving target, the risk that the
assassin would be discovered. A group of wealthy -conspirators could have
arranged much more secure conditions.

d. Critics have often been enticed by a form of intellectual pride: they
light on some theory and fall in love with it; they also scoff at the Commis¬
sion because it did not always answer every question with a flat decision one
way or'the other. Actually, the make-up of the Commission and its staff was
an excellent safeguard against over-commitment to any one theory, or against
the illicit transformation of probabilities into certainties.

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e. Oswald would not have been any sensibly person’s choice for a co¬
conspirator. He was a "loner," mixed-up, of questionable reliability
and an unknown quantity to any professional intelligence service.

f. As to charges that the Commission's report was a rush job, it .emerged
three months after the deadline originally set. But to the degree that
the Commission tried to speed up its reporting, this was largely due to
the pressure of irresponsible speculation already appearing, in'some cases
coming from the same critics who, refusing to admit their errors, are now
putting out new criticisms.

A

g. Such vague accusations as that "more than ten people have died mysteri¬
ously" can always be explained in some more natural way: e.g., the indi¬
viduals concerned have for the most part died of natural causes; the Com¬
mission staff questioned ltl8 witnesses (the FBI interviewed far more
people, conducting 25,000 interviews and reinterviews), and in such a
large group, a certain number of deaths are to be expected. (When Penn
Jones, one of the originators of the "ten mysterious deaths" line, ap¬
peared on television, it emerged that two of the deaths on his list were
from heart attacks, one from cancer, one was from a head-on collision on

a bridge, and one occurred when a driver drifted into a bridge abutment .)_

5. Where possible, counter speculation by encouraging reference to the
Commission's Report itself. Open-minded foreign readers should still be
impressed by the care,- thoroughness, objectivity and speed with which the Com¬
mission' worked. Reviewers of other books might be ■-encouraged to add to their
account the idea that, checking back with the Report itself, they found it far
superior to the work of its critics.

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